<P><B>Renee Harris Puremovement - 'Rome and Jewels'</B><P>A hiphop version of 'Romeo & Juliet' that has wowed audiences in the US. I saw their last show 'Cool Beat, Urban Heat' which was a collaboration with a trio of tap-dancers that worked brilliantly. This is bound to be one of the real fun events of Dance Umbrella.<P>Here are the calendar details from the <A HREF="http://www.danceumbrella.co.uk/menu.htm" TARGET=_blank><B>Dance Umbrella website</B></A>. Click on the coloured dates for programme information and on the venue name for theatre details. <P>Here is our thread on the the US performances of <A HREF="http://www.criticaldance.com/ubb/Forum6/HTML/000155.html" TARGET=_blank><B>'Rome &Jewels'</B></A>

The three Renee Harris performances are already sold out. The theatre are expecting a lot of contemporary dance fans to turn up on the night and be very disappointed. <P>There is some talk that they may bring 'Rome and Jewels' back to London for a longer run. I am out of London this weekend, but a team of intrepid CriticalDance reviewers will be covering the performances for us.

<B>RENNIE HARRIS: KNOWING THE CULTURE</B><P>WHO: RENNIE HARRIS PUREMOVEMENT<BR>WHEN: SAT 20 - SUN 21 OCT<BR>WHERE: QUEEN ELIZABETH HALL<BR>TICKETS: 020 7960 4242<P>Funny how something as simple as going to a movie can later impact on your life. Consider Rennie Harris seeing the film version of Broadway musical West Side Story for the first time as a teen-ager in Philadelphia. "Up till that time I watched old films - Danny Kaye, James Cagney. I knew musicals as musicals. But this form of dance, I didn't know what it was - modern dancey ballet. I just automatically felt they shoulda got some hip-hop dancers to do it."<P>Harris, now 37, is America's premier hip-hop dance specialist. One of his major achievements is to bring the complex energies of street culture onto the concert stage. Rome and Jewels is the first evening-length work he's made for Puremovement, a company he founded in 1992. US critics have deemed the 90-minute performance beautiful, fierce and funny.<P>A dozen dancers and three DJs retell Shakespeare's story from the perspective of black urban males. The Caps are b-boys and b-girls who move in the acrobatic, floor-based style mistakenly referred to as breakdance. Jewels, never seen onstage, is girlfriend of their leader Tibault. The rival Monster Qs, including engaging young Rome, are hip-hoppers whose dancing is a showier brand of stylised unison steps. The dancing is exciting and accessible. Speaking cast members additionally employ a dazzling, sometimes raunchy blend of Shakespeare and rap-poetry to move this tale of 'star-crossed homeys' along to its devastating conclusion. The net result is a gutsy, sustained blast of words and motion.<P>Rome and Jewels, which took three years to complete, owes as much to film director Baz Luhrmann as it does to Robbins and Shakespeare. Harris credits Luhrmann's audacious 1996 film of Romeo and Juliet with "pushing me in a way I needed to go. To do something epic and film-like with human bodies. To play with time." At first Harris shied away from the classic text because "I honestly didn't wanna open that can of worms." But at one of the rehearsals Rodney Mason, playing Rome, "started spewing Shakespeare in the antic now-ism of today. 'Yo, Ro-may-o, thou art a villain! So what up, nigga?' With movement, too. We went, 'Oh, **** , that's hot!'" After "grabbin' some research," Harris now believes that "Shakespeare was and is the essence of hip-hop. The lyricists of today - the rappers - probably come closest to his dynamic of writing."<P>Harris is unapologetic about the physical absence of Jewels. "It never really was about Romeo and Juliet, but about Rome's growing up with men, his sexist conditioning and his spiritual quest. I wasn't even thinking about the love part. I was looking at gang machismo." While this has led to accusations of sexism from a few critics, Harris remains philosophical. "If someone remarks that there's not enough women in the piece, they're shutting the work off. When that comes up, they're mostly dealing with their own issues. If I'm gonna do this [dance-theatre] as a part of my living, the only way is to be honest and true to myself. I want the work to be healing for myself and others."<P>"Rome mirrors my life in so many ways," Harris continues. Growing up in a tough part of Philadelphia, and leading a street dance group, he began choreographing and directing "without knowing that was what I was doing. But I'm kinda quick to take charge. It was rough, but a lotta fun. It was common for us to get chased out of a neighbourhood, or for an event to end in violence." Harris' knowledge of classical dance is limited; he's seen Swan Lake and Nutcracker, but never a Romeo and Juliet on pointe. This hasn't prevented him from receiving commissions from smaller-scale American classical companies. "It's usually liberating for the dancers. I'm excited because they're excited."<P>"Hip-hop is about being raw," he goes on, "never about being slick. People are missing the point in approaching it with a ballet aesthetic. Even though the show is heavily choreographed, there's improvisation. Everybody is not doing the movement the same way. It doesn't matter if the arms are lifted to the same height, or the weight distibuted the same way, as long as they're moving together in synchronised timing."<P>Harris scorns the mainstream's appropriation of street dance. "You may know the movement, but not the culture. I would never approach modern dance without trying to understand it. But black culture always gets kicked into this thing of entertaining. It's approached as a commodity, without understanding the history. People forget that the true foundations of hip-hop are an extension of traditional culture in the States. The understanding of it is different between the US and Europe. It's almost becoming a novelty in the US to do hip-hop dance-theatre." Still, Harris can't complain. "We've been touring heavily since '95. The dancers are pretty much on the road hard-core ten months of the year. For a hip-hop company to do that... And, as a choreographer, I make a living. God bless us, man."<P><P>------------------<BR>This interview was posted by Stuart Sweeney on behalf of Donald Hutera.<P>Donald Hutera writes regularly on dance and arts for The Times, Evening Standard, Time Out, Dance Europe, Dance Magazine (US) and Dance Now. He is co-author, with Allen Robertson, of The Dance Handbook.<P>This interview first appeared in either the Spring or Autumn 2001 editions of Dance Umbrella News. <BR> <BR>Join Dance Umbrella's mailing list to receive future editions of Dance Umbrella News. <BR>Call: 020 8741 5881 <BR>Email: mail@danceumbrella.co.uk <BR>Web: <A HREF="http://www.danceumbrella.co.uk" TARGET=_blank>www.danceumbrella.co.uk</A>

_________________This interview was posted by Stuart Sweeney on behalf of Donald Hutera and first appeared in Dance Umbrella News.

Donald Hutera writes regularly on dance and arts for The Times, Evening Standard, Time Out, Dance Europe, Dance Magazine (US) and Dance Now. He is co-author, with Allen Robertson, of The Dance Handbook.

I can't wait to see this tonight:<P> <P><B>Where art thou, Juliet? <P>Rennie Harris's hip-hop dance troupe are taking on the greatest gangster love story ever. But, finds Judith Mackrell , there's just one thing missing <P>Saturday October 20, 2001<BR>The Guardian</B><P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Rennie Harris grew up in an area of north Philadelphia known locally as the Badlands. Harris learnt early on that survival depended on staying in the right territory and running with the right crowd. His own story could easily have been lost with those of his friends who he watched "join gangs, deal drugs and ruin their lives". But, at the age of eight, he developed an obsession that was to lead him on to a different turf entirely: he discovered dance. <P>At first, Harris taught himself in secret, studying moves from the television show Soul Train. By the time he went to high school, he had become an accomplished "stepper" (the style since made famous by Riverdance), and when he discovered hip-hop in the late 1970s, he had himself a vocation.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> <P><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/saturday_review/story/0,3605,577220,00.html" TARGET=_blank><B>more...</B></A><BR>

Review in the Sunday Times<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>A hip-hop ballet? A rapper's Romeo and Juliet? Two families; one dancefloor? From London, it's a stretch of the imagination. From the housing projects of Philadelphia, less so <HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2001/10/21/sticulthr02001.html?" TARGET=_blank> <B> MORE </B> </A>

<B>Rome and Jewels</B> <BR>by Judith Mackrell in The Guardian (3* out of 5) <P> <BR>One of the most appealing qualities of Rennie Harris's hip-hop version of Romeo and Juliet is that it has none of the self-conscious hipness of Shakespeare performed in modern dress, no sense of effortfully acquired street cred. The Monster Qs and the Caps who glitter and brawl through this story of "star-cross'd homeys" seem to have come straight from inner-city Philadelphia, not from drama school. And yet they also feel like unusually direct descendants of Shakespeare's original swagger-tongued and glamorous cast. <P><BR><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/reviews/story/0,3604,578386,00.html" TARGET=_blank><B>click for more</B></A>

Review by Ismene Brown in the Telegraph<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>HIP HOP is a dance type that's been just waiting to explode into its full potential in theatre, and Rennie Harris Puremovement's hip hop version of Romeo and Juliet is the production that shows why.<BR><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=005760794236107&rtmo=axJpX3RL&atmo=rrrrrrrq&pg=/et/01/10/23/btdanc23.html" TARGET=_blank> <B> MORE </B> </A>

<B>Star-crossed lovers get a hip-hop makeover <BR>The Independent - United Kingdom; Oct 24, 2001<BR>BY NADINE MEISNER<P>RENNIE HARRIS PUREMOVEMENT <BR>QUEEN ELIZABETH HALL <BR>LONDON </B><P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>"I GOT the idea way back," the African American Rennie Harris says in his show's preface. "At about 15 I saw West Side Story and thought it would be better with hip-hop." It took 21 years, but last summer marked the premiere of Rome and Jewels, which has toured the US and now comes here. In London the audience packed the theatre, their youth and enthusiasm vibrating through the air. <P>Was it the generation gap? It wasn't the dance, though, that I found tedious. It was the narrative structure of this multimedia Romeo and Juliet story, reworked and updated to urban gangland in modern America. Romeo becomes Rome; Juliet is Jewels, but she never appears, remaining some invisible ideal. That was probably just as well, since I found it hard enough to distinguish the other characters in a staging so amorphous and garbled that it would make a riot look orderly.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> <P><A HREF="http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/article.html?id=011024000994&query=dance" TARGET=_blank><B>more...</B></A><P>

And my offering:<P>Rennie Harris’ Puremovement<BR>“Rome and Jewels”<BR>Queen Elizabeth Hall, London<BR>Saturday 20 October, 2001<P>The parts of the English language normally employed in the critique of dance are barely adequate for the purpose of describing Rennie Harris’ take on “Romeo and Juliet” - “Rome and Jewels.” Shakespeare is credited in the programme for supplying part of the ‘text’ and Harris, a striking hulk of a figure with long dreadlocks down his back, told the audience at the beginning of the evening that he got the idea for the piece from watching “West Side Story.” After that, customary dance vocabulary runs out - Harris informs us that, aged 14, he had thought “West Side Story would be better with hip hop dancers.” DJs scratch records in rhythm (this for the uninitiated is turntablism), handsome black ‘guys’ balance in handstands on muscular arms, circling their legs above their heads as if dancing ballet upside down, and Rome (Romeo), former US Marine, Rodney Mason, interlaces Shakespearian sonnets with graphic, and occasionally pornographic, rap. <P>Rome and the “Monster Q’s” (the “Montagues” in normal Romeo and Juliet parlance) are dressed in baggy black street clothes and dance what I would guess, drawing on my narrow experience, is pure hip hop. Tybalt and the “Caps” (the “Capulets”) are dressed in more clean-cut red tracksuits, dancing what I would have said was break dancing, but my vocabulary is limited and I should say “B-boy.” The two gangs clash because Rome has been up to no good with Tybalt’s girl, Jewels (Juliet). Rome speaks to Jewels - “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? - but she is never seen. He simulates a kiss and even full sex with the spectral heroine. But Jewels isn’t the point. We are, rather, witnessing Rome’s rite of passage on the streets – North Philadelphia, where Harris was raised and became skilled in the art of street dance and, presumably, survival. Body parts are isolated to perform segregated movements, heads slide along shoulders, walking backwards in a slide as if on a conveyor belt. Dancing degenerates into being thrown to the floor and given a good kicking in true gang style. <P>Rome’s principal monologue takes us through the range of characters he could be on a rough Philly street: the Romeo and Juliet text and Shakespeare’s sonnets delivered straight, with chilling drama, and mixed with what I would call hard-core rap. He mimics a gun with his hand pointed at the audience, he becomes a police officer shouting at him (self) “to put the gun down.” He’s a drunk, then a marine turned fugitive from justice, and then an evangelising priest. A veteran of the Gulf War who now has his own dance company, Mason started life dancing on the streets of South Philly. He is a fine dancer and convincing actor. When he balances on his arms and then slides onto his chest, his movements are so graceful that he appears to perform an inverted arabesque, his arms like thighs. <P> The use of screen is topical in dance at the moment. Used properly, the close-up of a body part performing a movement demonstrates the complexity of the movement and adds dramatic tension. We see details of the B-boy movement – a close-up of the neck of a Cap supporting his full body weight before launching into a complicated manoeuvre. As the gangs creep about the streets, their bodies appear like the disjointed images produced by heat-seeking equipment used to search out the enemy in the jungle. The body mass appears as a deeper concentration of colour. We could even have been in a sinister southern swamps voodoo scene.<BR> <BR>The final clash between the gangs is a “full-on” scene from West Side Story, complete with swearing and blaspheming in Spanish (Boxing champion Joel “Tecknyc” Martinez is genuinely Puerto Rican). Each gang dances, the gangs clash and then the individual dancers do their “thing,” demonstrating their individual prowess. At least one of the dancers is also a stunt man so we are treated to a number of double black-flips. The two women in the production “B-girl” their hearts out; Mercutio dies in Rome’s arms; Rome is after Tybalt’s blood - “Break him off,” he instructs the boys. The red tracksuits “get it.” “O, I am fortune’s fool” declares Rome, faithful to the original text, as he, too, falls to the ground. No one is a winner, except, maybe, Harris, the rapping narrator and ex-con, who relieves the dying Rome of his watch, believing it to have once been his “s**t ”.<P>Harris has integrated all aspects of hip-hop and rap culture into his production, right down to choreographing the scratching of records to complement the dancing, and has both integrated speech and dance so that the piece works as both drama and dance. It is hard to estimate how much of this genre the market can support and how far you can stretch these street dances artistically before a standard, hackneyed set show is produced, like the ubiquitous tango show that takes you through the development of tango from brothel to modern ballroom. Whilst I reserve judgement until I see another Puremovement production, I can guess that he won’t churn out Giselle and Swan Lake hip hop style. This production, at least, is brilliant. Or should I say wicked?<P><BR>[This message has been edited by Emma Pegler (edited October 24, 2001).]<p>[This message has been edited by Emma Pegler (edited October 26, 2001).]

That sounds like a very interesting performance. I hope they do come back for a longer run as Stuart suggested they might.<P>I agree with you Emma that it will be interesting to see whether the brilliance can be transferred into another piece. Romeo and Juliet as we know is a story that has lent itself so well to so many variations and interpretations. I find it interesting to see and understand how perceived "social dance" forms can be transferred into a theatrical form. Presumably the narrative helped a great deal in this case?

i really wanted to catch puremovement, but it was sold out. i think though, that it's really good to have a new version of romeo and juliet that a younger generation (and older too!) can relate to because it will have references to the culture that is relevant to them.<P>i saw puremovement about 2 years ago in San Francisco and thought they were absolute genius and Rennie Harris was completely visionary in his use of hip hop, theatre and dance - it just makes going to the theatre accessible and you feel thoroughly entertained and challenged at the same time.

Christine - I know that the Box Office was telling people that it was sold out but on Saturday night there were a large number of empty seats - 5 whole rows in fact. God knows what happened there - freebies that people didn't collect? Such a shame!

I have edited my original post to be eligible from a word count perspective for the writers' competition:<P><BR>The parts of the English language normally employed in the critique of dance are barely adequate for the purpose of describing Rennie Harris’ take on “Romeo and Juliet” - “Rome and Jewels.” Shakespeare is credited for supplying part of the ‘text’ and Harris tells the audience that the idea for the piece came from “West Side Story.” After that, customary dance vocabulary runs out - Harris, aged 14, had thought: “West Side Story would be better with hip hop dancers.” DJs scratch records in rhythm (this for the uninitiated is turntablism), handsome black ‘guys’ balance in handstands on muscular arms, circling their legs above their heads as if dancing ballet upside down, and Rome (Romeo), former US Marine, Rodney Mason, interlaces Shakespearian sonnets with graphic, and occasionally pornographic, rap. <P>Rome and the “Monster Q’s” (the “Montagues” in normal Romeo and Juliet parlance) are dressed in baggy black street clothes and dance what I would guess is pure hip-hop. Tybalt and the “Caps” (the “Capulets”) are dressed in more clean-cut red tracksuits, dancing what I would have called break dancing, but is, in fact, “B-boy.” The two gangs clash because Rome has been up to no good with Tybalt’s girl, Jewels (Juliet). Rome speaks to Jewels - “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? - but she is never seen. He simulates a kiss and even full sex with the spectral heroine. But Jewels isn’t the point. We are, rather, witnessing Rome’s rite of passage on the streets – North Philadelphia, where Harris was raised and became skilled in the art of street dance. Body parts are isolated to perform slowed down, segregated hip-hop movements and then dancing degenerates into being given a good kicking, true gang style. <P>Rome’s principal monologue takes us through the range of characters he could be on a rough Philly street; the Romeo and Juliet text and Shakespeare’s sonnets delivered straight, with chilling drama, and mixed with what I would call hard-core rap. He mimics a gun with his hand pointed at the audience, he becomes a cop shouting at him (self) “to put the gun down,” then he’s an evangelising priest. Mason, a Gulf War veteran who started life dancing on the streets of South Philly, excels as both actor and dancer. When he balances on his arms and then slides onto his chest, his movements are so graceful that he appears to perform an inverted arabesque, his arms like thighs. <P>Screen and video are topical in dance and Harris uses projected images of the dancers to good effect, demonstrating the complexity of hip-hop. The bodies roaming the streets appear like the disjointed images produced by heat-seeking equipment used to locate the enemy in the jungle – the body mass appears a deeper concentration of colour.<BR> <BR>The final clash between the gangs is a “full-on” scene from West Side Story; the gangs dance against each other and then each dancer demonstrates his or her (there are two “B-girls”) individual prowess. Mercutio dies in Rome’s arms; Rome wants Tybalt’s blood - “Break him off,” he instructs the boys. The red tracksuits “get it.” “O, I am fortune’s fool” declares Rome, faithful to the original text, as he, too, falls to the ground. No one is a winner, except, maybe, Harris, the rapping narrator, who relieves the dying Rome of his watch, believing it to have once been his “**** ”.<P>Harris has integrated all aspects of hip-hop and rap culture into a piece that works as both drama and dance. It is hard to estimate how much of this genre the market can support and how far you can stretch these street dances artistically before a standard, hackneyed set show is produced (like the ubiquitous tango show that takes you through the development of tango). I can guess, however, that Harris won’t churn out Swan Lake hip-hop style. This production, at least, is brilliant. Or should I say wicked?<P><BR>

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